Subject: Re: POW user suggestion
From: Scott (mrphido@prodigy.net)
Date: Tue Aug 14 2001 - 23:01:27 CDT
On 08/16/2001 Rogier van der Hee wrote:
<snip>
> Anyway, on to the suggestion:
> As a user I missed support for the simple user task:
> "Closing a document AbiWord, while not ending the program itself".
>
> I could be wrong, but after searching for 10 mins I couldn't find it.
> The program says under the File menu "Close Document - Crtl +
> W", and below is a separate option Exit. I didn't suspect AbiWord
> to exit the program, I had expected it to close my document as it
> says.
>
> So I had to restart it again. I don't think this is good behaviour.
> Thus my suggestion is that when the last docoment is closed, you
> still have an instantiation of AbiWord running, however with a grey
> background and greyed out controls or something.
>
> But perhaps it's better to first discuss the question if my initial
> suggestion is a good and than what the appropriate behaviour
> should be of the program. As I'm new to the list I'm not aware to
> previous discussions on this topic, I'm sorry.
>
> With friendly regards,
>
> Rogier van der Hee
This is precisely the reason that I suggested a pager. It is one not so
small annoyance of AbiWord. So I am going to pull out my toolbox (it's
the best I have in the absence of a soapbox) and stand on it for a few
seconds.
First a pager could go completely unnoticed. My porposal is that it
would open as the opening screen, with the small addition of three
buttons on it; New, Open, and Exit. It would be quickly be covered up by
the opening blank document and could never be seen again by the user, if
he means to exit the program by closing the last document he clicks Exit
on any document and Abi (asks to save each document in succession if it
has not already been saved) closes completely. If he just closes all
documents then the pager would be left to start a new doc, open another
doc, or exit. (Stepping down off the soapbox now)
The point is this is more than a minor irritation. Here are a couple of
ideas which I have had and have been suggested to do this:
1) The suggestion was made for a Close & Open button in the File menu
which would do the same thing essentially. Probably two buttons
(widgets?) really; a Close and Open New and a Close and Open Existing.
They could go between the Print and Close buttons and would probably
need lines before and after.
2) Another idea I have is a dialog which opens on the closing of the
last document (exiting would close Abi entirely) which would appear
(after the save dialog, if it has not been saved) asking "Do you wish to
open another document" with yes/no buttons. Yes would open a new
instance of Abi and no would close Abi. Simple, elegant, and blows my
pager idea completely out of the water
Submitted for your consideration,
Scott Bingman
If you don't really own land because of taxes,
Would you not really own your computer if you install WinXP?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Thu Aug 16 2001 - 09:21:47 CDT